Chloé Nwangwu | Engineering Visibility: A Behavioral Science Approach to Branding Part 1

Srini: Chloe, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks much for taking the time to join us.

Chloe Nwangu: Thanks for having me,

Srini: Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about you by way of our mutual friend Nikki Groom, and when anybody who is a former guest refers somebody, I almost always say yes. So I'm really thrilled to have you here. But before we get into your work, I wanted to start by

asking you, where in the world were you born and raised and how did that end up impacting what you've ended up doing with your life and career?

Chole Nwangu: Yeah, this is such a good question. Um, so I was born in California, in Southern California. But I was raised in a few different places. I think the place that I lived the longest as a kid was Connecticut, where I'm currently located. And I was raised by Nigerian parents, so my parents weren't citizens when I was born.

And it's one of those classic stories where like at school you are American and at home it's like a completely different world. um, So that's like where I was born and raised in the whole deal to how it affects my work. That's a good question. I think I would say that.

I am used to being on multiple sides of like the visibility issue, if that makes sense. I'm used to being hyper visible because I'm almost always, especially when I was growing up and only but I'm also used to being unseen or unrecognized or however you wanna put that. It's like this weird combination of being hyper visible and unseen at the same time.

And so that's an experience that I think is not unique to me, but I think is also something that. Rubbed me raw and filled me with an almost like holy discontent and was not something that I could let go. and I think it's only in hindsight that I realized that is what what has been going on with me.

Um, and that I can trace it back that far, but yeah. Yeah I think that, that's what I would say to that question.

Srini: Yeah. You mentioned this idea of being American at school and Nigerian at home, and

I can wonder like for you, what that experience was of like blending these two identities while also trying to be part of the country that your parents aren't from. Cause I can relate to that. That was

my experience entirely.

So I'm so curious, like what was that like for you?

Chloe Nwangu: Oh my goodness. Ooh. It depends on what phase of my life we're talking about. But I think at the start it was really I think at the start it felt easy and then it got harder over time. And I think that's honestly because at the start it didn't even occur to me that I wanted to share the culture that was at home outside. And so it was very easy for me to be like, who I was outside in the American world, and then come home and be like, cool this is home life, this is family.

And I think that as I grew and it became harder to keep those parts of my life separate, that's then when I started to struggle. Um, and. It created a lot of frustration for me. Like I remember in, I wanna say like maybe it was like middle school or high school or something. Excuse me. I I just started learning how to like, draw human bodies, right?

Like this, I was like in an art class or elective or something. And my teacher at the time, who is just the loveliest man, and I still know him today, saw my style, which was like very much in the style of the stuff that I read at the time, which was like lots of manga and anime like just that kind of thing.

And so it was like very much in that comic book style, saw that style and was like, So permissive of it, but then started like suggesting what if you drew characters who looked more like you and had different proportions and different skin tones and things like that. And I remember that started happening a lot more often.

Not just in drawing, but in singing and like everywhere that I was expressing myself that people knew that I was different and were like, you should probably be expressing some of that. And at the time it was always so frustrating to me cause I was like why? I don't really need to.

What's the purpose of doing that here? And I think it was only when I got older and I started realizing where some of that desire to keep. My culture inside and at home, and frankly, safe came from that. I started realizing, oh, okay this is probably not a great thing.

this is probably not a great thing. That culture is something obviously to be celebrated and to be loved. And there's, there are some, frankly, suss stuff attached to my wanting to not express that part of myself. And but it took a long time for me to get to that point. Yeah, it took a long time for me to get to that point.

And so that intermediary period was just one of real frustration. And then add to that, the fact that my. My parents and my grandparents and aunts and uncles, of which there are many of course started including me and my siblings more in political discourse about Nigeria. And like we would, regularly go back and forth between the states and Nigeria.

And just the way that they started impressing upon us, the importance of our roots and all of those things, right? So it just, it became a really frustrating, difficult balancing out cause it felt like I couldn't keep anybody happy. And. And that like nothing would stay in the right place. I don't know if that's the best way to describe it, but that's what comes to mind now.

Just imagine myself as a younger person trying to juggle all of these different incentives and interests and it was only really like post-college, I think. Like I graduated from college and I was like, hold on. I shouldn't have to be juggling these things.

Like these worlds can and probably should bleed into each other.

And why was I so hesitant to do that? What am I picking up on around me that is making me hesitant to do that? And so began a really deep investigation into why. So I don't know if that's like

the response Yeah.

Srini: raises a lot more questions. And part of the reason I asked the question was because I think that you and I can relate in that way. I was actually just writing about these three sets of values that we all are shaped by, which are cultural, social, and personal values.

And usually

the first two basically get in the way of the third the third.

Because the third we often discover and we realize they're in conflict with the previous two.

And

Chole Nwangu: Mm-hmm. I dunno about you, like when we would go to India as a kid, I, my mom would be like, we're going to India for summer vacation.

Srini: I was like, this is not a vacation, it's a punishment. And because I don't know about like you, cuz my parents would go for three, four months at a time because they wouldn't

go that often. And I realized now why that is cuz like they were seeing their parents after four years.

If I also saw my parents

after four years, I would stay for three months too. But like I wonder for you like one, when you go back to Nigeria, like now as an adult versus as a kid, do you, is your perception of it different? Cause like I remember when I go to India as a kid, I'm like, I hate this. Like every time we come here now

I remember I told my dad I will even in 2007 I went, I was like, I'll never spend my own money to go there.

They made me go cuz they're like, okay, you're in business school and we know you won't go or won't have time to go. And then we went in

2018 for my sister's wedding and that time I went on a surf trip and literally I was back there six months later and I thought to myself,

wow, this is crazy how much my perception of my own country has changed.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. A thousand percent. I can say that this is exactly what happened for me that as a kid like , I don't know if this happened to you, but Nigerian parents. Would make this threat if you were like misbehaving, which is like rare, but if you were a misbehaving Nigerian kid, often you got the threat that like they would send you back to Nigeria to go to school there, right?

Like that was the threat and like immediately pulled and everybody back in line. In fact, I only know one like cousin who that actually happened to, and he straightened right up, like straightened right up immediately when he was back from Nigeria. Completely changed person.

And so that was the threat.

And so yeah, absolutely that feeling as like a younger person. My brothers and I actually laugh about this now, today, where we would go, like we would hear, okay, like it's the summer is Nigeria, right? And we'd be like, Ugh. Oh my God, are you like, okay, why, why do this to us? Absolutely felt like torture, especially since we weren't even staying in like the city like

Lagos. Cuz our family is like southern from southern Nigeria. No, like we were going into the village proper. So this was like, like electricity was not there's this common phrase like NEPA took the light where just the the National Agency for Energy would just take the take light occasionally.

And by occasionally like at least once a

day. And so you would have to have generators and that meant just like the AC would be down, no lights. Like what? Like television. Haha. Like bold of you to assume. Don't even think about trying to get anything done except for what you can get done like in a journal or something.

So like you just had to use your imagination. But yeah, so it was like the worst of all possible times as a

kid. And then I remember when it switched for me was after. Undergrad my cousin, excuse me, who lives in Nigeria, invited me to just come and stay with her and her mom. And they lived in Lagos and like they lived this very chic lifestyle.

She was like in the fashion industry as like a consultant. And She got me a position at a women's magazine that I think started off as like an intern. And then I just raised through the ranks really quickly. And so I lived in Nigeria for some time after undergrad, before going to grad school.

And my perspective on Nigeria completely changed. I like. First of all, Nigeria is stylish as hell. Excuse me. I, can I, curse on this podcast ? It's super stylish. Um, so much fun. The people are fun. The events are fun. And yes, there is a lot of issues in Nigeria that frustrate me today as an adult, but like they frustrate me from the perspective of there's so much potential and there's so much that, um, that can be done here.

But yeah, my perspective has completely changed. I'm like, yeah, now absolutely I will spend my own money to go to Nigeria on the regular cuz it's actually

great. but yeah, absolutely

Srini: at, I'm morbid curious. What is a Nigerian wedding like?

Chole Nwangu: Probably exactly what you imagine

it to be. I, yes, exactly. Yes. , I was gonna say, I'm like, it's probably it's like an Indian wedding So there if you wanna simplify a Nigerian wedding the pieces of it will be like a traditional wedding or like a wine carrying, and then there'll be like the white wedding air quotes or like the the church wedding essentially.

And

Srini: guessing nobody is interested in simplifying it cuz nobody in India would simplify an

Chole Nwangu: No, no, nobody simplifies a thing. And like I'm telling you now that when slash if I get married my wedding, like I won't be able to have less than

Srini: Yeah. I made

a list.

Chole Nwangu: that's the bare minimum.

Yeah. I

Srini: my relatives alone. And I remember telling my cousin, I was like I'm like, given how late it is in my life, I'm like, you, some of these people will probably be dead by then, right? And she's you're such an asshole. No, I hadn't even thought of that. That's so good. Oh, No. I feel bad. Please. I can't let anyone in my family listen to this. But like absolutely yes. This my, list was a hundred just for my family alone. I was like, and these are people

who I have to invite and that I

actually like, yeah. Yeah. I'm not even like the five, that number of the 500 isn't even including like my personal

Chole Nwangu: friends or Like people that I know and I actually care about.

This is just like people in the Family, and then f like family friends and aunties I've never heard

of and that and like second cousins.

and like that important person, 12th cousins that the governor of that province, like that

sort of stuff. geez Louise. So that's, yes.

It's exactly as lavish and extravagant as you as you are picturing, yes, there are costumes and there are costume changes and I say costumes and air quotes, but they, the family wears what we call Asha B, which I think translates to like family cloth in Yoba, which is not the tribe I'm from.

So forgive me, anyone who's listening to this And it just means that everyone uses the same cloth to make their outfit so that people know that you belong to the family that is celebrating. But like the silhouettes and everything are like completely different. So think, just imagine this is really stereotypical, but imagine like the trailer for Black Panther too, where we saw the funeral of Tela and like everyone's in white, but the outfits are different that,

that. Yeah, that's,

yeah.

Srini: what are the sort of if we were to stereotype Nigerian cultural values from the time you were growing up, like what are they, if you could distill them to the stereotypical ones.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah. This is a good question too. I would say education is really highly valued. Teachers are like doctors for us. And I use that parallel just because the way that we treat teachers in education here in the states is like wildly different. And I often find that kind of

heartbreaking, not like truly heartbreaking.

but Education is like a must and it is expected. And so this is also why around this time of year, I am often going to graduation parties that are insanely lavish, because we we celebrate that. education, I would say, I would also say achievement. we're A very achievement oriented culture.

We're really focused on winning whatever that happens to look like. Sometimes winning looks like. Being the richest person in the room. Sometimes winning looks like being the smartest person in the room. Sometimes winning looks like being the best dressed person in the room. Sometimes it's a combination of all of those things.

Sometimes it's a bunch of other factors that I haven't named here,

but achievement is really important. And hand in hand with that, like pretty stereo, stereotypical ideas of success and what that looks like. Let me see, what else? Education, achievement I would say

I, oh man. Um, I would say like pride, but like in a good way and a bad

In a good way. Cuz you can't tell a Nigerian anything, right? If you try to insult a Nigerian person, it's just are you a goat? Like what what is this? So are you mad? Like why would you say such a thing?

It's clearly false.

Right? Which is great, right? That leads to very confident People generally, and this is again very stereotypical, but it can also lead to like pride in the sense that you're just like, oh no.

Not this kind of pride. And I will, I won't give a, like a poor example of this, but I'll give the flip side example of this and say in the same way that you can't tell a Nigerian anything, like insulting them is Futile

Nobody insults or like scraps or argues verbally like a Nigerian, like the Nigerians are devastating. , just honestly some of the things that I have heard Nigerians say to other Nigerians, like, to their

face fully, I felt the burn and like I was an innocent bystander,

had Nothing to, I didn't know the people, right? So it's just oh my gosh. Like I . Okay. I will give you an example of the story. I remember this was, we were in Nigeria during the height of the Ebola epidemic, and this was because we were there for a funeral. And on top of that, Both of my parents are medical personnel.

So my mother was like mothering, but also as a doctor. And my father, who's an epidemiologist was also like working with the World Health Organization team on Ebola. Like he was part of the team that was working on Ebola in Africa at the time. And um, and so he was like in and out, right?

And I remember we were flying back literally from the countryside cuz you have to take a plane from Lake US to where we go. And somebody like fell ill on the plane and , oh my goodness, there's so many parts of the story. Someone got sick on the plane and they didn't let anybody else off, which like, of course that makes sense.

And I remember my mother went up to the staff and they were like, and she was like I'm a doctor. I can help if you need support. And this hostess looked at my mom and was like, so as I, it's and so my mom was like, okay. And she goes and sits down, right? Finally they bring in some sort of, they, they bring in people in hazmat suits and they evacuate this person in a tube situation.

And I see this poor. white gentleman stand up and he has his phone out and he's recording this as it's happening and like the, the people in the seats around him turn on him and wow. I just start shouting. And the only words that I like remember, cuz it was pure, truly a cacophony, was um, shut up.

Sit down. Would you do that to your own country? Sit down just just abusing this poor man. And so he sits down chastened. Meanwhile, I'm also just watching some other person who knew enough not to stand up and like choreograph that they were filming this and they were just sitting down and like filming between the seats cuz they knew better.

So Just Nigerians can be like, long story short, Nigerians can be devastating. And this is just like the kindest example that I'm giving. I've heard some truly like heinous stuff. It's amazing.

But, um, I can relate. The thing that I wonder and you and I are probably very similar in this way at some point, I'm

Srini: guessing you found that your own real personal values conflicted with the ones that you are raised with. Talk to me

about that and how it's led to what you do and the role that has played in this whole idea of visibility.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. I Think that especially with the idea of achievement and I would say that this is one that I. I continue to wrestle. But especially with the idea of achievement and success and what it's supposed to look like, this is something that I think once I started seeing the ways in which it not only stifled me but in some cases, in, in some very real ways, made me sick, right?

I grew really ill in the pursuit of some of some of these ideals, right? And just getting to a point where physically I could not uphold some of these ideas anymore. I Think especially with the idea of achievement, like my idea of that had to not only change but I had to adopt a new perspective of.

How might I put this?

I think I had to adopt a new perspective of what it meant to

be seen as successful. That's what I'll say. And a lot of the things that started, I would say one of the key things that changed for me was this idea of it has to be safe and it has to be fair. And that's not necessarily something that is the case when it comes to visibility. Especially If you're what I call an under-recognized person.

Srini: Yeah.

Chole Nwangu: So I I had to. I had to learn to start putting safeguards in place so that I could remain safe myself mentally, emotionally, but also physically, so that I would not like, continue to grow sick or Ill get worse. I had to put those safeguards in place and also realize that if this idea of achievement and not just achievement, but like being seen to be achieving if this thing, if this value made me sick.

Made me sick, me , like emphasis on the me that I wasn't, that I wasn't the only person. And that might come from like a maybe a too high estimation of myself and my capabilities. Who knows? But I like to say that I, I think pretty well of myself and so if this was something that I was struggling with and had literally gotten me to the place where I was like bedridden, right?

If that was happening to me, then there was gonna be somebody else out there who was struggling in, if not the same way, in similar ways. And And that's I think how it began for me. Like I, I definitely eventually realized the sort of I might say condescension, inherent in that idea.

But I was also pretty young youngish at the time.

But yeah, but that's how the journey started for me of divesting of some of the more poisonous elements of the values that I espouse and was raised with. That's how it began

for me, that I was like if I physically cannot do this thing, that means that there are other people who are struggling.

So why is this happening to me? What does this mean? And I started

investigating, Yeah.

Srini: Let's get into this whole idea of this visibility engineering method that centers on behavioral science

because it's funny cause I'm listening to you say that, I'm thinking to myself, there's an odd paradox here, right? Like achievement is partially like, why do we want to stand achieve something so that we stand out? And I mean

I've built an entire brand around standing out like this, the entire ethos

Of unmistakable. But to look at it from a behavioral science perspective that caught my attention. So talk to me about this framework, particularly in a world of noise where it's just everybody is like a me too brand.

And like some influencer says, everybody should start a podcast. And before you know it, everybody in their mother has one. It's over and over you see this same thing.

And I remember I decided to Laura Belgrade, I was like I'd seen so many people come out of Marie four Lewis B school.

And I was like, how often? One of my friends sent me something like 13 different websites of potential clients of hers. And I was like, I replied back and I was like, look, I'm like, Every one of these websites sounds and looks exactly the same, and I have no idea what the fuck any of these people do. So like my answer is no to all of them.

Chole Nwangu: Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Know exactly this. Exactly this. Okay. I. I have a whole, I have a whole thing about this. Where do I even begin? okay. Visibility engineering, right? Let me start there. Let me start with concrete stuff before I get very abstract. Visibility engineering really came from the idea that,

the kind of influence that brands are looking to have doesn't just happen, right? And in fact I would state that any influence out there doesn't just happen. It is often engineered, right? It's just that sometimes it's engineered across generations, right? And so we don't always see the moving parts that are that are propping that up and making it.

And so that's that's where the idea came from, that I was like, okay, what. Does it take really to create a brand that you have no choice but to pay attention to despite what's happening in the environment around you? And That's really where the, it's part of the reason that behavioral science comes into this, right?

Because behavioral science is really the study of context, right? It's the study of like we have a given environment. How do we facilitate a change in behavior given that environment, right? And so when it comes to visibility and generating further influence and all of these things, right?

What we have is a given environment. A k a, the attention economy is super SuperDuper, noisy and crowded, right? Um, And we have a change in behavior that we would like to see. So how do we facilitate those things and then add to that an extra wrinkle? And it's this idea of under recognition.

And I actually have a piece in Harvard Business Review about this, so I'm sure we can include a link or something in the show notes. But just this idea that there are some of us, some people, some brands that have almost like an invisibility cloak over them, right. And cognitively in a cognitive sense, right?

And as a result, they are getting less attention than their peers. And so if the tools that we currently have, around building brands, developing them around marketing and PR and advertising and all the rest of it, if the tools that we have developed and the strategies and tactics we've developed don't account for that, those invisibility cloaks, then we're in trouble, right?

Like visibility doesn't work the same for everyone. And I suppose I should rewind and define some terms

too, cuz that might help a little bit. So what I'll say is, how basic do we wanna, how basic do we wanna

Srini: Okay, so I was trying to think about this cuz I think there's a lot of overlap between my sort of core message and yours. But the funny thing is, I think I realized one thing that I'd seen even when I got through the unmistakable book, somebody wanted me to teach a course on this idea of how to be unmistakable was like, yeah, I can't do that. Because if you could teach a course on it, it wouldn't be unmistakable because there's no formula

Chole Nwangu: Exactly.

Srini: And that was, I think the hardest thing about that book is to get that idea across because it was very abstract. Like I remember Seth Godin and tribes he, there's a review on the tribes.

If you look at the Amazon reviews where it says, the only problem with this book is Seth doesn't actually teach anybody how to get build a tribe. And I said the thing that is genius about Seth Godin's books is that he gives people a compass, not a map. And that is really at the core of so much of what I talked about, this idea of unmistakably and

And and I really appreciate that you brought up context.

So I was trying to think about this I think the best way to do this is to frame it in a very concrete example. So let's just say you have some content creator lingering in obscurity. That

would be a good way to do this and really apply it, I think.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Okay, sounds good. So let's say we have this nameless content creator. Now if this content creator is, for example a person of color, if they are a woman, some combination of those things the things that folks would consider socially marginalized, maybe. If they belong to any one or any combination of those communities, then they are also dealing with something that I call visibility biases. And visibility Biases are essentially the subset of cognitive biases, right? All of the shortcuts in our head. Um, The subset of cognitive biases that talk about how we've all been conditioned to overlook certain kinds of people and experiences.

A great example of a visibility bias is the racial attention deficit, right? And this research was able to empirically demonstrate that white Americans are 33% more likely to overlook their black peers. And that's even when they've been incentivized to pay attention to those peers. And when they know that those peers have some kind of information or knowledge that can help them with the pressing problem.

So when both of those things are true the deficit of attention, the way in which the attention's allocated that gap is 33%. Right Now for those of us who are like in the. Brand world, brand adjacent world, that's like brand salience, right? Okay, so you're telling me that this content creator, even if they have product market fit or whatever it happens to be, right?

And brand salience, even if they have all of those things, they're still 33% less likely to be seen or noticed or recognized by, by white folks. Ah, that's a problem, right? So that's like foundation, like foundational stuff. Like level one, we have this issue, right? So even before getting to the, okay, how do we make this person less obscure?

We have to deal with the fact that visibility biases are also playing a role here. So it's not just the usual things, it's an addition to that,

right? And all of the ways that can affect their efforts. So that's the first thing, right? Then the second thing is saying, okay, now that we know which visibility biases are involved in ways that this is affecting you, now we can start with an analysis of how your brand is currently perceived.

And I would pause here and say that I know that there are lots of definitions of what a brand is out there. I will present to you a, definition from my perspective as someone who is, from a behavioral science perspective, from a scientific perspective. And it is just that a brand is a system of ideas that influences the behavior of other people.

Said another way, it's a kind of influential real estate in someone's head.

And so when we are talking about analyzing how someone's brand is viewed what we're really trying to do is analyze what are, what's the current impression that brand, that system of ideas is giving off.

Because then we get to understand a better, we have a better understanding of the context that's in place that may or may not be contributing to the kind of behavior change that they would like to see this content creator,

right? And let's make things more concrete, right? This content creator, let's say that they are creating content because they would like to have What kind of services a content creator have? Let's say they wanna be able to, um, sell courses and have like brand deals,

Let's say that, that's like the a thing, right? Okay, cool. The behavior change that we are looking to see in this instance, right? Is this person going from obscure and literally cognitively overlooked, right?

Or erased, however you wanna put that under recognized, going from that state to a state where people are recognizing them buying their course and inviting them to collaborations,

Those are changes in behavior and I think part of what's interesting is that often we don't see our work in the field of branding, marketing, all of that.

We don't see our work as facilitating behavior change often because this layer of under recognition isn't present. So we just think about it as, okay, like we just gotta get people to

But when we realize, oh, we gotta get people to buy, despite the fact that cognitively, they've been conditioned not to see this person, that's when you're like some behavior stuff has to change here.

And that's why that behavior change element is so obvious to me, whereas it might not be as obvious in other situations. So analysis of impression, right? We gotta analyze how this brand is currently being perceived. And then at the same time, we've gotta go ahead and say, all right Given what we know about their goals, given what we now understand with the context, how does this brand need to be perceived in order for this behavior change to happen?

And here, behavioral science a and a whole bunch of other social sciences like semiotics, which I love. Shout out to Rachel Laws, excuse me, Dr. Rachel Laws one of the founders of commercial semiotics and my mentor. right, Like these traditions have a lot to say about connecting impressions that people have to behavior change, right?

And so that's where things can get really fruitful and really interesting, right? So once we understand how they need to be perceived, then it's really all about impression management at that point, right? We know how they need to be perceived. Cool. We just need to manage that. Over time.

Srini: Yeah.

Chole Nwangu: So I would say that's the first

Maybe of visibility engineering.

Just this idea of impressions are important and we can study them from a scientific perspective and leverage them to our advantage. Right. Then

go ahead if you have questions or things to say.

Srini: just thinking about this like in terms of how a brand is perceived or how a person is perceived in the public eye. I'm, and it's funny cuz I think about this from a couple of contexts. One was, I don't know if you signed in matchmaking my ridiculous reality TV show appearance, but but I thought a lot about sort of the way that all played out, particularly in terms of being a public figure. And

Why I was very mindful of how I came across was like, like I already have an audience. Like everything I say here is gonna be amplified no matter what, and

so how I come across is not just a reflection on me, but on every single person that's associated with me. Investors, editors, agents, like every single person.

And that's the thing, when you're in the public

eye, like there are consequences to. Everything that you do in the public eye, like you have to be mindful about what you say, what you do, regardless of the

fact that stupid celebrities don't understand that. And that's a whole other conversation.

But the thing that I wondered about you talked about this idea of what is the impression of a brand? And I think that it made me wonder like, where is the disconnect between what I think the impression of our brand is versus what people actually think is and how do you find

that?

What is the way to discover that? Because I, I feel like the fear in asking is you're gonna hear things you don't want to hear.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah. . Yeah, no, I know. I, relatable. Completely relatable. And I think the thing that studying behavioral and social science has given me the benefit of, is realizing that it's better to know. In fact I think it's not even that background so much as my, and I don't wanna introduce yet another wrinkle into our conversation, but like my background in in international mediation probably is the thing that actually trained me for this, that it is better to know than to not know, right?

Because if I don't know about an extra. Relevant thing, then this peace settlement can get made and fall apart, like within the year.

And that's on all of us in the room. Cannot afford to have that happen. And So to your question of like, how do you discover what that gap is?

Honestly, it's asking

right? It is a lot of, and behavioral science is really, I. Good at showing us like how to ask these specific kinds of questions, like what questions to ask, how not to ask them in a leading way that

thing. But it's really asking, right? Like you wanna ask and the things that you're looking for are not necessarily the same things that most marketers and brand people are taught, right?

Like you're not necessarily looking for like demographic details and psychographic details. Which I could go at length about why those things frustrate me and why the ideal client avatar is garbage and why niching has been sent from hell to kill me. I could go at length for those things. We do not have time.

What I will say is that when you are asking, what you are looking for are motivations,

And motivational drivers in the environment, those are the things that you're looking

for. And I. What else do I say here?

So the way that you get to that isn't really, even by the right questions, getting the answers and leaving it, there, there is a sort of coding process that happens on the back end where you get the answers that you do from folks, and then you start filtering those answers through what you know about core motivations and motivational drivers that human beings have that we discovered in the tradition of psychology and behavioral science and what have you, right?

You filter it through those things and that gets you closer to The truth of the

matter because there's always the, there's always the issue of someone telling you what they think you want to hear and like all of those sampling

Happen when you're trying to do like surveys and that sort of thing, right?

And so having a coding process on the back end that is, and by coding for those who are unfamiliar, it's just how you you tag and organize the information that you are getting qualitatively often and sometimes quantitatively. so, So, that's how you discover the

gap, frankly. You have somebody who knows how to do that for you.

And then you already know the impression that you

think have, Right? And so when you compare that, those things, then you see the gap. So yeah, I hope that

Srini: No, it doesn't. As I'm sitting here talking to you, my first thought was, okay, we've got about a thousand reviews on iTunes, and literally after you get this phone, like call, I'd be like, all right, I'm gonna dump this into chat, G p T, and literally take whatever

you just said and be like, all right, do exactly what she just said with all these reviews.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Srini: instinct. But that's because I think

like that like my first instinct is, okay, how do I systematize this?

Okay.

Chole Nwangu: Yeah,

absolutely.

Srini: you and I

Chole Nwangu: Do it. And let me it I'll show you how to do it when we get done here, but I think it'll blow your mind. But so I guess then like once that is done, like what goes from there is are we talking about okay, we're changing copy on a website?

Srini: Like that kind of stuff. Then what does the actual execution look like from there?

Chole Nwangu: Yeah. Yeah. So I found that it often depends on who's doing

this work, but I'll just speak for myself. For me and my firm sorry, my head. I went like for me and my house. I need to chill. I'm so sorry. I the way that I do this with my clients, so this. Obscure content creator was my client.

What we are doing is we are putting together something that I call a visibility hq. it's really just a visibility management studio or center type thing, right? And the idea is that you have how do I express this? The idea is that you ensure that every element of the impression that you have just discovered that you need to engineer, right?

Like now you have the plan for closing the gap between what you thought and what's actually happening, right? Every element that needs to be at play, in order to close that gap, every en like engineering move that you need to make, you need to have those things documented somewhere. Flexibly almost. This is like the compass versus a, a map type thing, right?

Where anybody, any collaborator, whether or not they are an employee, whether or not they're somebody that you're gonna be I don't know, doing a co-sponsored thing with, right? Anybody can come in, see this and be like, cool, I know what to do. And so I know that's getting a little bit

more but Fully , if I shared my screen and showed you what this looked like, you would understand why it's so difficult to speak about most.

most. Every single person I've shown the visibility HQ two has been like, I okay. Wow.

Right? So that's, I think that's the first. The first

thing, right? Like it, there has to be a single source of truth and it has to be flexible enough to be able to adjust regardless of the context around you.

And that's the thing, that's the lens that behavioral science gives you, right? Because if the context changes and suddenly everything falls to pieces, that's not security. That's just the stability for a time,

right? Like you want stability across time. And so that's the thing that's

really About making sure that you document it in a way that is flexible.

Like

that.

Srini: I appreciate that you have brought up context over and over in this conversation, and I think that is the most overlooked aspect of people following prescriptive advice. It I started writing this book called Everybody is Full of Shit, including Me. And it was basically about context and why context basically renders virtually all prescriptive of advice and effective

Chole Nwangu: Agree.

Srini: And that I appreciate so much.

Cause I feel like people are so context blind when they

follow advice. They, like I had someone, I've had people who was like, oh, how do you grow a podcast? I'm like, how the hell do I know? I started 15 years ago. I don't know anything about growing a podcast. Like I won't teach a podcast and courses. I'm like, I don't know what to teach you. Like I'm like, this was all very organic. I don't have a distilled strategy in any way at all.

And even if I did, it wouldn't work because of the fact that the

context is so different.

Chole Nwangu: exactly. Exactly Exactly this. And this is why when folks do you ask me and I get this question, I get questions like this a lot. Okay, but what do I do? Like, how do I do it? I'm like, look, honestly, we have to build you your own compass, right? So that You can do it yourself, right?

Like it, you asking me what to do is not going to, the answer I give you is not going to be helpful unless I have all the context and I can build you a tool that lets you navigate the various kinds of contexts that we know exist out

there, right? And this is going to be different for every

And that's the thing that's like bananas to me. That it's the ability to work across context that's so valuable that like we've completely lost or pretend isn't there until the next giant context shift happens and suddenly everything

breaks. And so that's why like when folks ask me questions, I'm just I can answer this general generally, but like what you really need is like a.

A compass that will let you navigate your own specific context and it needs to be calibrated

to you. And I can't give you calibrated advice or calibrated guidance or a calibrated heading unless I have a better understanding of the context. And so yeah, I'm like, dude, we haven't even gotten to the influence piece here and like the behavioral oh, there's such fun, there's so many fun things.

On the other side of impression management, even though I know this is the part that most people are like interested in, like they're interested in the, okay, like, how do I make ? How do I know what colors are going to convey the impression that I want? I'm like, this is like super basic stuff.

I'm like, yes, we can do that. That is something that can be done semiotics at its most base level. Can do that. It can do much more. But like at its most base level, yes, it can do that. But also , what do you do once you have the impression that you need? And that's when influence management comes in.

Right? And that's the part that like I love and I'm constant, constantly reading new, interesting things about so Yeah.

Srini: Maybe we should do a part two.

Chole Nwangu: I agree. . I agree. Yeah, I think so. Especially since I think one of your guests, Damon Centralla, I think you had Damon

on your show. And

I love

this man. I, first of all, I love this man.

I love his book. I've read all of his research. He has no idea who I am. Okay, he might, cuz he answered one of my emails and he was very kind about it. But fully probably has no idea who I am. And so much of the work that I do on the influence management side of my visibility engineering

essentially is based on what we now know because of network

And a lot of the cutting edge stuff that

Srini: Yeah, I wrote

a guide on how to build

an audience in 2021 based entirely on the principles from that book.

Chole Nwangu: could you send that to me because I love that

so much. I love

that

Srini: send it to you if Yeah, I have it. Let's do this. I think it, it's a no-brainer and people probably hear what the hell is the influence part? So we'll do a part two. So we'll stop here and yeah. Tune in for part two of the conversation and we'll see you in the next episode

Chole Nwangu: Thanks again  so much for having me and for listening to me talk about Nigerian stuff.